I hope you enjoy these cards and the whole set, let us know if you ever play a game with them!
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Sunday, January 14, 2018
AL All-Star Pitchers
The final post in our 2017 All-Star Set: the AL pitching staff! Unsurprisingly, it's another staff loaded with great cards. Also unsurprisingly, most of the starting pitchers could not keep up the production and their season end cards dropped a tier or so by the end of the year. Still, the amazing first half of Dallas Keuchel gives him the best AL starter card. Chris Sale and eventual Cy Young winner Corey Kluber are not far behind, giving them a devastating 1-2-3 punch to the top of the rotation. They get a fourth and fifth Tier 2 starting pitcher in Ervin Santana and Jason Vargas. The Astros also sent Lance McCullers (who definitely fell off) and he provides a decent Tier 3 arm. Michael Fulmer, Chris Archer, Yu Darvis, and Luis Severino (who was a tier 2 by years end) also provide depth as Tier 3 starters. The bullpen is the true jewel in the AL's crown, featuring several amazing arms. The best are Andrew Miller and Craig Kimbrel, giving Tier 1 cards with huge strikeout ranges and no doubles. Osuna, Kintzler, and a fun IP 2 Chris Devenski give them a plethora of Tier 2 guys to help out even more. Finally, there's one of the most fun cards -- a Tier 3, yet Control 1 Delin Betances, who has an absolutely monster all-or-nothing card.
I hope you enjoy these cards and the whole set, let us know if you ever play a game with them!
Starters:
Relievers:
I hope you enjoy these cards and the whole set, let us know if you ever play a game with them!
Starters:
Relievers:
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Hey guys, love the website! I have been a huge MLB Showdown fan since 2005. Haven't gotten into Clutch due to no actual player cards. Wondering, why did you stick with the old formula instead of the new?
ReplyDeleteWe're really glad you're enjoying the site! I know most of us started collecting the cards around the same time you became a fan, and we had our own league that mixed all the cards together. Around 2011, we got inspired by other fan-made cards and decided to make our own modern cards. Since we never played with strategy cards, I think the original set just felt easier to reverse engineer formulas from. Plus, while the hitters are destined to have lower OBs, their charts are more exciting. There's also some feeling here that the formula only changed because of the insane numbers Barry Bonds was putting up, so without his giant OBP in the game, it felt right to use the original formula. Finally, we just felt there are a lot of custom modern cards with the newer formula and wanted to give people a slightly different edge. I don't know if you have Facebook, but someone is posting a whole set of 2017 teams with the new formula (if that's the kind of card you prefer)!
DeletePersonally, I think the hitting tends to overpower the pitching by a little too much in the newer formula, which can certainly make the games more fun. For example, there's a ton of starting pitchers in the set I reference above that are under 100 pts, with low controls that give up baserunners at 16 or worse! Since I love playing out shortened seasons with Showdown leagues, I like getting what I feel is a more realistic statistical result, especially from the pitchers.
Also, feel free to suggest a player or team -- just pick a season -- that you'd like to see us do! We love making these cards and are always open to new ideas to further distract us from slowing creating our classic set cards.
Thanks for the response Dave. I've been running through games with some buddies of mine, and i would agree that your cards seem to make the game more realistic. We played with a variety of seasons, but never used the Strat cards. Never felt there was a reason to complicate things.
ReplyDeleteA team that I would like to see would be the 1997 Seattle Mariners. I know they didn't win a lot in the Post Season, but that was a fun roster.
ReplyDeleteOh wow, yeah this will be a fun team to make! Ace level Randy Johnson plus 56 HR Griffey, 40 HR Buhner, and 456 OB Edgar Martinez being balanced by a really bad bullpen... it's going to be an interesting team! I don't know if I've ever seen a 90 win team with a closer whose ERA was over 7 before, but there's a first time for everything!
DeleteIt'll probably take us a little while to make the team, but if you check out the Showdown Hall of Fame Randy Johnson and Ken Griffey Jr articles, those two 1997 team studs are ready to copy and print to use already!
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